


Drunk Theology

by battle_cat



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst, Crowley is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), Drunken Confessions, First Kiss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-29 23:33:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19840840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/battle_cat/pseuds/battle_cat
Summary: Local demon accidentally talks about feelings while inebriated. Also God. And stars.





	Drunk Theology

They had been day drinking, four days after the world didn’t end. Day drinking had turned into a late lunch had turned into happy hour had turned into to dinner had turned to night drinking, and at some point they had stumbled back to Crowley’s flat, together. For a nightcap, naturally.

It wasn’t like they weren’t used to spending hours and hours together in enjoyable company. But since they’d both, somehow, come back from Heaven and Hell alive, something had changed. Spending hours and hours together had turned into sort of…not leaving each other’s side.

Neither of them had said anything about it. They’d just…continued to be in the same space. Indefinitely. For the past four days. And, well, Aziraphale had lately become more aware than usual of how much he didn’t like the idea of being in a space where Crowley wasn’t. So, he wasn’t complaining. He certainly wasn’t expressing the thought that lingered in the back of his head, the gnawing little worry that if either of them left it would be the last time they saw the other, because did they _really_ know that Heaven and Hell had decided to leave them alone?

It was better if he stayed near Crowley anyway, since at the moment Crowley was incredibly drunk. Between Aziraphale eating food several times over the past few days and Crowley matching him two to one at almost everything they had imbibed, Aziraphale was currently pleasantly fuzzy around the edges, while Crowley was hammered.

Come to think of it, Crowley had been hammered quite a bit since the world didn’t end.

Aziraphale had been hoping tonight for Giggly Drunk Crowley, which was his favorite drunk Crowley. That didn’t seem to be how things were working out, though.

At the moment, Crowley was pacing in unsteady loops around the flat’s balcony, a bottle of Talisker in his hand. They were supposed to be sharing it, except that Crowley has started drinking straight out of the bottle and hadn’t relinquished it since. It sloshed dramatically as he gestured but never spilled.

Like everything else in his flat, the balcony was all hard right angles, concrete and glass, with a gray slab at one end that Aziraphale thought might have been some Hell-bound prison warden’s idea of a bench. He’d sat there, because there wasn’t anywhere else to sit, but now he really wished he’d miracled himself a cushion first.

The doors to the balcony were through the plant room, and as Crowley undulated his way back and forth the soft warm glow from the plant room’s recessed lighting played over his face.

(The plants. On the morning after the Apocanot, when they were figuring out how to be each other, Aziraphale had wandered into the plant room and been astonished by their beauty, and he had said so. “Don’t compliment them!” Crowley had roared. “They don’t deserve it, the little shits!” He had given the plants an uncharacteristically fearsome glare, and Aziraphale could have sworn that a few of them trembled.

There was…well, there was definitely…something going on there. But he hadn’t yet found the right moment to bring it up again.)

“See the thing is, the _thing_ is—” Crowley was in the middle of rambling. He’d been trying for a loop and a half of the balcony to remember what, exactly, the thing was.

“Humans!” he said triumphantly. “They have it so much better than us. Brains’re so…malleable. You can see it. They’re already forgetting what happened. Mass hallucination. Unannounced international war games. A little odd weather, ehh, but who can really say what’s normal, what with climate change these days?” He drank.

“‘S so easy for them to believe whatever comforting nonsense they want. They don’t even have to believe in Her.” He waved a hand at the sky. “They can just decide she’s…not there. Believe in…in chaos theory or…astrology or karma or Dianetics or…whatever.”

He took a long swig out of the bottle and grimaced.

“Not like us. We know She’s up there. Watch—” He broke off with a hiccup. “Watching everything happen— _hic._ And not giving a shit.”

“Crowley!” Aziraphale hissed. They may not be officially under the employ of Heaven and Hell anymore, but he hardly thought blasphemy was a great way to start their careers as free agents. “She can hear you, you know.”

“Oh, She definitely hears me,” he slurred, his hand drifting vaguely skyward again. “She just doesn’t _care._ ” He drew out the last word into a long drawl. Then he hiccuped.

“I don’t believe that,” Aziraphale said softly.

“Yes, but you don’t _know._ That’s— _hic_ —the whole _point._ ” Crowley closed his eyes, his face scrunching in concentration. After a moment Aziraphale realized he was trying to miracle the hiccups away. 

He seemed to be too drunk to make it work. Aziraphale did it for him with a wave of his fingers.

“Ah,” Crowley sighed, satisfied. He took another drink. “You see,” he began again, “when you’re an all-seeing, all-knowing, omni-tip…omp…all-powerful deity, what you don’t do matters just as much as what you do. Do.”

He took a step toward Aziraphale, swayed, and grabbed the balcony railing for support.

“War, disease, starvation, genocide—She just _watches_ it all. She just lessit happen! I mean, She let her own son die. Slowly. Horribly. Crucifixion! Ugh. What kind of fucked-up parenting is that?”

“Yes, well…he came back. There was a reason for that one.”

“Yes, but having a reason doesn’t undo the slow, horrible dying part. That still happened!” He leaned his elbows on the railing, staring out at the city glittering around them. Took another drink.

“She was going to just let the world end,” he mused. “Just…poof! Like that.”

“You don’t _know_ that. That’s the _whole point._ ” Crowley turned enough to make a face at him, then went back to staring morosely at the London skyline. He drank.

“Did you ever think,” Aziraphale ventured after a moment of silence. “That, well, all this, that…that maybe it was a test? For us, I mean. A test of our—“ He stopped. “Um. Of our friendship.”

“HA!” To his great surprise, Crowley tipped his head back and roared with laughter. “A test!” he howled. “A bloody test! You know, for once you might be right, angel. Because that’s just _fucked up_ enough to sound like something She would do.”

“I—how—” 

He suddenly registered that Crowley wasn’t just drunk, he was _angry._ He had no idea how that had crept up on them, but it was here.

Crowley spun around, gestures wild enough that Aziraphale was waiting for him to smash the bottle on the railing, but it missed by a hair every time. “Here, have a test, good luck with that!” he spat. “Oh, by the way, if you fail the entire world ends aaaaand you both die. Cheerio!”

“Well, I don’t think that’s how She—you make it sound so _sadistic_ when you put it like that—”

“Oh sure, wonderful test! Couldn’t just give us a Buzzfeed quiz or something! She let me think you were _dead,_ and it doesn’t _matter_ if there was a reason for it. It still _sucked!_ ”

He turned abruptly back to the railing and took a long drink. He was well into the bottle by now.

Aziraphale opened his mouth, closed it again, and before he could think of something to say in response to _that,_ Crowley said: “Y’know, d’you ever think that maybe she _wants_ us all to suffer? Hm? Maybe she thinks it’s funny.”

“I can’t believe She thinks of us like that,” Aziraphale said quietly.

Crowley shook his head. “No. No, of course _you_ can’t.”

He said it with such bitterness that it felt like a physical slap. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Aziraphale asked. He really did try to not make it sound like an accusation.

“Nothing,” Crowley muttered, suddenly deflated. “‘S stupid. Dunno why I’m talking to you about this anyway. You dunno.” His hand went instinctively to his front pocket, where he would have tucked his sunglasses, except he had tossed them on an end table when they entered the apartment. Finding nothing, he took another swig out of the bottle instead.

Aziraphale said nothing.

“You dunno,” Crowley repeated. “What it feels like to have God remove you from Her favor.” The hand not holding the bottle made a gesture, grabbing and twisting and wrenching something loose.

Aziraphale held his breath. Crowley talked, sometimes, about Falling. He talked in generalities. But not like this. Not about what it felt like.

“To be _so sure_ that you’re loved, and then…” Crowley makes a sound like a cartoon anvil falling off a cliff, tracing a long downward arc over the balcony railing with his finger.

“I thought,” Aziraphale said softly. “You couldn’t remember anything. From Before.” But now that he’d said it, he couldn’t remember if Crowley had actually told him that at some point, or if someone in Heaven had.

“Oh,” Crowley breathed. “I remember.” His face softened, for just a second, and then the bitter smile snapped back into place. “Why erase the memories when leaving them in place is _so_ much more painful?” He raised the bottle in a mock salute to the sky and then chugged from it.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale ventured. “Do you think maybe you’ve had enough?” Good God, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d said that. Somewhere in the 1600s, maybe.

“Mm, no!” Crowley wiped his mouth. “No, definitely not. I’m celebrating our victory. We passed the test!”

He was smiling, but it was that tight, ghoulish smile, the one that said he was furious. It was unmooring. Aziraphale didn’t understand how they’d gotten here, if he’d said something or did something—

“We did pass, right?” Crowley was saying. “This is”—he burped—“what a win looks like, right?”

“Crowley—”

“Excellent test, God, yes, very good show. Ssspiffing!” Crowley snapped, and he was hissing now, which meant he’d _definitely_ had enough—

“Crowley, if I’ve said something wrong, just—”

“Aauugghh,” Crowley said, with a wildly overdramatic gesture of waving something away, which was absolutely no help at all.

“I don’t know why this is something you’re getting angry about—”

“Because I didn’t need a fucking _tesssst_ to know how much I love you!”

_Oh._

Crowley clamped his mouth shut into a thin, tight line. He closed his eyes and Aziraphale watched every ounce of whisky-stoked color drain out of his face.

“Crowley…”

Crowley silently held up a hand: a plea, a defense. It was shaking.

“I…” Aziraphale started, but Crowley turned on his heel and walked away from him. He was unsteady enough that he bumped his shoulder on the sliding glass door, but he didn’t stop.

“Crowley—” He scrambled to his feet and followed him. “Crowley, wait—”

Crowley was on the far side of the plant room by the time Aziraphale could make it through the door. He had no idea where Crowley intended to go, only that he couldn’t let him leave, not like this.

“Crowley, _stop._ ” He didn’t quite intend for the cold snap of command to come out, but it did.

Crowley stopped. Facing the far wall of the plant room, shoulders hunched, swaying slightly.

A handful of steps had never seemed so far, but Aziraphale made himself cross the room. He reached out and touched Crowley lightly on the shoulder. Crowley flinched.

“Crowley? My dear—”

“ _Don’t,_ ” Crowley hissed. He didn’t resist when Aziraphale turned him slowly, gently around by the shoulders to face him, but he couldn’t meet his gaze. He was still holding the whisky bottle. Aziraphale took it from him gently and set it on an unused plant stand.

Crowley didn’t object. He looked utterly miserable.

They were also suddenly very, very close.

“Didn’t mean…” Crowley mumbled. 

“You didn’t?”

“No, I _meant it,_ ” he snapped. “I just didn’t mean to _say_ it.”

“Why not?”

“Because…I…you…don’t…” Crowley’s whole body was tensed as if waiting for a blow, his face all hard planes and clenched teeth, and Aziraphale had never, ever, in all his eons on Earth, wanted more acutely to reach out and soothe someone.

“I do, though,” he said, and he hoped it was enough, for now. “I do.”

Before he could lose his nerve, he leaned in and brushed his lips against Crowley’s.

He felt Crowley freeze against him, and for one agonizing moment he thought he’d done the wrong thing. He pulled away, just enough to try to see Crowley’s face.

Quick as a cobra, Crowley reached out and grabbed a handful of his jacket. He didn’t pull him in. He didn’t need to, because that was all the signal Aziraphale needed and he was already leaning in to kiss Crowley again. It had been a hundred and twenty-odd years since Aziraphale had kissed anyone, but some things were easy to remember.

It was cautious, at first, a soft exploring of how their mouths might fit together. Crowley was…maybe a bit more tentative than he had expected, but so _responsive,_ eager to follow wherever Aziraphale led. He discovered that if he did something Crowley would do it back and try to do it _better_ , and soon they were playing a game of increasing dares of tongues and teeth and lips that made them both forget about breathing. Crowley’s hands were fisted into his jacket and his hands were on the sharp line of Crowley’s jaw and in his hair and stroking down his back, and at one moment Crowley swayed a bit, so Aziraphale put his hands on his hips and pressed him firmly back against the wall and Crowley made a sound, startled and yearning, and _oh,_ that was _thrilling,_ and Aziraphale found himself, quite unbidden, wondering what other sounds Crowley could make…

This went on until they were both dizzy from it.

Finally Aziraphale pulled back—not far; their foreheads were still pressed together, but enough to take a second, to remember to breathe again. The little bit of Crowley’s face that he could see from this angle was _smiling._

“My dear,” Aziraphale breathed. “I think that was very long overdue.”

“I’ll sssay,” Crowley mumbled, and he laughed. Giggly Drunk Crowley had made an appearance after all.

Crowley looked around, as if realizing they were in the plant room for the first time. Something unreadable flickered over his face. “Can we be…not in here?”

“Of course.” They were still incredibly close; speaking could turn back into kissing at any moment. “Where should we go?”

“I haffa bed, y’know, angel,” Crowley slurred.

He did know. They had slept there, together, quite chastely the night after the world didn’t end.

The situation seemed entirely different now. He wasn’t entirely sure what would happen if they went into the bedroom. He was even less sure what he wanted to happen, and had no clue at all what Crowley wanted to happen, and if any of those things were the same.

“You’re extremely drunk, my friend,” he reminded Crowley. And he was; Aziraphale still had a hand on his hip to keep him from listing to the side.

“I _am_ extremely drunk. My friend,” Crowley mumbled. He touched Aziraphale’s lips. “ _Bessst_ friend.” He somehow managed to make it sound lascivious.

“You’re quite a bit drunker than I am.”

“Nnmm,” Crowley agreed.

“I don’t suppose you plan on getting less drunk.”

“Pffffft,” Crowley scoffed.

“As I suspected.” He sighed. “I think we should go back outside then.”

“‘S cold out there.” Crowley sounded downright petulant.

“That, we can do something about.”

They stepped back out onto the balcony. Aziraphale snapped his fingers and produced a rattan chaise cushioned with overstuffed pillows, a thick tartan wool blanket hanging over the arm. It took up nearly the entirety of the balcony, but it was big enough for two.

“Much improved,” he sighed.

He sat down, his back against the armrest and his feet up. It was infinitely more comfortable than the infernal stone block he’d been sitting on before.

He held out a hand, and after a moment Crowley took it. He settled himself, with only a couple of drunken wobbles, on the couch with his feet up, too, leaning back against Aziraphale’s chest. Aziraphale draped the blanket over both of them. After a moment he found Crowley’s hand underneath it and laced their fingers together. Gradually, he felt Crowley relax against him, a warm, reassuring weight between him and the sky.

It was another thing they hadn’t talked about, the way this bulwark against simple physical comfort had collapsed between them in the days since the world didn’t end. They hadn’t talked about it, but it was wonderful.

They lay together under the blanket and looked up at the stars.

“‘S nice,” Crowley murmured after a minute.

“It’s lovely,” Aziraphale said.

There was a stretch of silence and he’d started to think Crowley had fallen asleep, when he said: “Was my department, y’know. Back in the day.” He nodded his chin toward the sky.

“Stars?”

“Jussa few of ‘em. But…I looked at a lot of plans.” Crowley looked up at the sky above them, and out of the corner of his eye, Aziraphale caught his fleeting, wistful smile.

There were so very many things he wanted to say to Crowley. _I am so sorry. I’m so sorry I couldn’t be braver, sooner. I’m sorry I didn’t want to see what you see in us for so long. I’m sorry I swallowed the lies of Heaven and wielded them against you, even when I was no longer sure I believed them myself. I’m sorry I couldn’t stop hoping the God that hurt you would help me. You were right when you said there was no one to help us but us. Please, understand, I still have to believe in something. But you were right. You were right when you said our side was the only side that mattered. You were right and I was blind and I almost lost you for it, and that’s the worst thing I can imagine, because I love you so much._

He couldn’t say any of that, though.

Instead he said: “Tell me about them.”

“Ah, s’rubbish here,” Crowley muttered. “Can’t hardly see anything, with the city lights.”

“Tell me about what we can see.” He pointed to a bright star nearly directly above them. “What’s that one?”

“Altair,” Crowley said. Aziraphale snuck a look down in time to see the soft smile again. “Got a whole load of planets humans haven’t discovered yet. Really weird ones, too.”

“What’s that one?”

“That’s Jupiter. Not my team. But very pretty.”

“And that one?”

“That’s a GCHQ spy satellite.”

“Oh. What about that one?”

“Ah. Vega." Aziraphale caught a real, full smile on Crowley's face this time. “Funny story about that one actually…”

**Author's Note:**

> Crowley's God rant is basically the bitterest, most cynical version of [this post](https://fuckyeahisawthat.tumblr.com/post/185943843005/gods-ineffable-game).
> 
> I love that Crowley is Bad at Feelings is already a canonical tag, thank you GO fandom.


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